The Hindus in Fatima, 5th May 2004

and the grave misrepresentations in
John Vennari’s report

by Timothy
Tindal-Robertson

timt-robertson@clara.co.uk

Recently,
considerable scandal and confusion has been stirred up on the internet against
the Shrine of Fatima, through the publication of pictures, captions and a
report on a website issued by Catholic Family News
and its editor, John Vennari, which allege that in May 2004 the
internationally-renowned Shrine was desecrated when “a Hindu ritual – a
ceremony to false gods” was carried out in the Capelinha or Little Chapel of
the Apparitions, “making it necessary for the chapel to be re-consecrated”.

These allegations constitute a very serious charge indeed to make with
full internet publicity, against one of the most respected and venerated Marian
shrines in the whole world, which is so highly esteemed by the present
Pope.No practising Catholic in good
standing with the Church would want to risk injuring the Shrine’s reputation by
going public with such charges.

At the very least he would seek to obtain an explanation first-hand
from the authorities before taking such a drastic step.Vennari’s report has caused a public outcry,
and it seems clear that he went ahead and published it on his own initiative,
without first consulting with the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima or with the Rector of
Fatima, and hence that it is based not on first-hand evidence, but on a copy of
a television programme in a language he himself does not speak – Portuguese.

So what basis in
truth is there for his allegations ?

Vennari is a journalist.If he
was so concerned at what he believed had taken place, why did he not request
the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima and the Rector of Fatima for an interview, in order
to question them first-hand ?If he had
done so, he would then have been able to report in their words exactly what
transpired when the Hindu priest was in the Capelinha.As we will see below, this account can be
read in the Clarification issued by the Rector of the Shrine, entitled “The
Church of the Most Holy Trinity will not be an ‘Ecumenical Temple’”, which was
published on page 3 of the July issue of the Shrine’s monthly journal, Voz da Fatima, and will shortly be available in English as a
separate document.

It follows that as Vennari did not do this, he did not know at
first-hand exactly what the Hindu priest did when he was in the Capelinha.The principal if not the sole source of
Vennari’s report was in fact an account of the event which had been broadcast
on a Portuguese television station, and supplied to him as a video.Accordingly, if the evidence on which
Vennari based his case is to be accepted, one would need to know firstly if the
presentation of the event in this film was correct, and secondly how much of
the Portuguese text in the video was correctly understood, translated for him
and transcribed into his report.Vennari himself does not speak Portuguese, as he had admitted in an
earlier article he wrote, in December 2003, in which he sought to allege that
Fatima was to become an “interfaith shrine”.

Vennari is entitled to his views, like anyone.But as his evidence is second-hand and its
content is questionable, his report cannot be given any higher value than that
of a personal and subjective view of what he believes took place.In fact there is almost no point of
resemblance between Vennari’s report and the Rector’s factual first-hand
account of what actually transpired.

When the
two versions are compared, it becomes clear that Vennari’s report is a highly
sensationalised account based only on what he had seen in the video.The report begins with eighteen photographs
and accompanying captions, followed by four pages of text.The latter contains a considerable volume of
background material that is unrelated to the event in question, and which has
been slanted so as to arouse in Catholics an adverse reaction at what it is
alleged took place while the Hindu priest was in the Capelinha, and also in an
attempt to justify making inflammatory and unsubstantiated allegations and
accusations against the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima and the Rector of the Shrine.

Having
read this report, much of which is irrelevant, how many people will then
realise that it contains almost no account of presence of the Hindu priest in
the Capelinha, although the whole focus of the report was the sacrilege of the
Hindu ritual that was alleged to have been carried out on that occasion.In fact, out of a total of some 144 lines of
text in the report, only tworefer to the event in the
Capelinha, in the following words:

The newscast then shows the Hindus bringing flowers
to the statue of Our Lady inside the Capelinha. The Hindu priest stands at the
Catholic altar and recites a Hindu prayer.

These
words appear to agree with the Rector’s account.But their real significance is not what they state but what they
omit.In all four pages of Vennari’s
report, there is no mention whatever of the all-important action which then
took place.So the most serious charges
are made about an event to which there is almost no reference in Vennari’s
account except for the above statement.The reasons become apparent from a careful re-reading of the report.

1).Vennari could not give an eye-witness
account of what took place in the Capelinha, because he was not there.One can be certain he would have wanted to
give his own version of the event, if he had had been there at the time.

2).He does not speak Portuguese, and so without
a translator he would not have understood the nature of the Hindu priest’s
petition, as cited by the Rector in his account below.

3).He did not interview the Hindu priest or the
Rector or the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, in order to obtain a first-hand account
of what actually took place, from those best qualified to inform him.

4).His sole source of information for the event
appears to have been a video copy of the Portuguese television programme.This would need to be verified before it
could be accepted as a correct record of the event, and being in Portuguese,
how much of it would Vennari have understood, and was it translated accurately
?

Now let us
read what in fact happened when the Hindu priest was in the Capelinha, as described
by the Rector in the following paragraphs of his Clarification:

The Hindu priest and a translator went up to the
image of Our Lady, while the remainder of the group stayed down below.The priest sang a prayer which lasted a few
minutes.No gesture was made, no rite
was performed, on or off the altar.The
translator explained that he had asked “the Most Holy Mother that she would
give wisdom and discernment to those who govern nations, so that the world could
have peace, peace, peace” (paragraphs 5 and 6).

After
making their prayer, the Hindu pilgrims were received in a room by the Bishop
of Leiria-Fatima and the Rector of the Shrine,

to whom they said they had come out of devotion
towards the “Most Holy Mother”.They
did not speak about a similarity or transference between this name and any
entity of their religion (paragraph 8).

So it is
not merely not true that the Hindu priest carried out “a Hindu ritual –
a ceremony to false gods”, as was stated in a caption underneath one of the
photos on the website.It is precisely
that assertion, as well as a number of other gravely misleading and erroneous
assertions in that report, which are the source of the scandal and confusion
that has been caused.

For while
it may have been unexpected for Hindus to have made such a visit, it is clear
from the form in which the Hindu priest addressed his petition, firstly that
they were drawn to Fatima by the sacredness of the place, due to the presence
of “the Most Holy Mother” which they wished to recognise; and secondly, in
asking the Most Holy Mother for peace, they were coming to her shrine for the
same reason which draws to Fatima on pilgrimage, not only Catholics for the
most part, but also some members of other Christian denominations, and even
some non-Christians, such as the Dalai Lama and the President of India.

It also
seems clear from the Rector’s description above, that what took place in the
Capelinha did not offend against the Church’s directives for prayer and
petitions by non-Christians in Catholic sanctuaries.In fact, can it not be said that the form of petition used by the
Hindu priest, as stated above, could equally validly be used by any Catholic
Bishop or priest ?Did it not conform
to the norms of Catholic devotional practice at the shrine of Fatima ?

At Fatima,
the touchingly maternal manifestations and message of the Most Holy Virgin
remind us of the sublime truth of Mary’s spiritual motherhood of the whole
human race.It derives from the words
of Jesus dying on the Cross, “Woman behold your son”, and to the disciple,
“Behold your Mother” (John 19: 26, 27), it has been taught by the Church from
the earliest centuries, it is specifically enshrined in the Second Vatican
Council (Lumen Gentium, 54, 60, 69), and it has been taught by Pope John
Paul II, in his Catechesis on Mary, Mother of God (published in Theotokos, “Mary
has a Universal Spiritual Motherhood”, pp. 236 – 239), and in his Encyclical, Redemptoris
Mater.

In this
Encyclical, commenting on the words of Jesus to His Mother in John 19: 26, 27,
the Pope says that by virtue of the Redeemer’s Paschal Mystery, “the Mother of
Christ … is given as mother to every single individual and all mankind” (Redemptoris
Mater, 23).The message of Fatima
is in perfect harmony with this sublime teaching.In his homily at Fatima, on 13th May 1982, the Holy
Father taught that “in the light of a mother’s love we understand the whole
message of the Lady of Fatima … the message is addressed to every human being …
her care extends to every individual of our time, and to all the societies,
nations and peoples”.

Finally,
the Preface of the Mass of Our Lady of Fatima reminds us of this teaching:
“…She in receiving at the foot of the Cross, the testament of divine Charity, received
all men as her children …”

Without in any way lessening or diluting her mission to proclaim Christ
as the unique Saviour of all mankind, in pursuit of the teaching of the Second
Vatican Council, under the enlightened leadership of Pope John Paul II, the
Church has been working to bring about peace and reconciliation between all
peoples through initiatives in the fields of ecumenism and inter-religious
dialogue.It is clear from the Rector’s
account that the presence of the Hindu priest in the Capelinha took place
within that context and was faithful to the directives of the Church.

We must
also remember that Our Lady appeared at Fatima, in the Cova da Iria, or “hollow
of peace”, to ask for prayer, especially the Rosary, for peace, and as a direct
response to Pope Benedict XV’s urgent petition to heaven for peace, at the
height of the First World War.When
Pope Paul VI came to Fatima, on 13th May 1967, at a time of grave
international tension on account of the Cold War, he said,

We have come to the feet of
the Queen of peace to ask for the gift, which only God can give, of peace.

How could
a Catholic who apparently saw himself as acting out of loyalty to the Church
and Our Lady of Fatima, have been willing to put his name to a report which is
so seriously misleading and contains gravely erroneous allegations and
accusations ?

This is a
question which calls for calm and firm assessment, based on objective facts.
For those who are familiar with the long-standing hardline ultra-traditional
position adopted by John Vennari and his associate, Fr Nicholas Gruner, this
latest attack on the Shrine of Fatima will not come as a surprise.Only seven months previously, in October
2003, the same group used the occasion of the International Congress on “The
Present State of Man and the Future of God”, to engineer a similar media storm
of scandal and confusion, when they falsely alleged that “the Shrine is to be
developed into a centre where all the religions of the world will gather to pay
homage to their various gods”.

Having
begun his Clarification by reminding his readers of the connection between
these two different attacks on the Shrine, the Rector then went on to state:

As far as the Church of the Most Holy Trinity is
concerned, which they persist in calling an “ecumenical temple”, we can state
that this description, although susceptible of a Catholic interpretation, does
not originate from the Shrine.We do
not intend – and we have never intended – to hold any celebrations in the church
which is being built, that are not in accordance with the directives prescribed
by the Catholic Church.The Shrine
strives to be faithful to the message which God has entrusted to it, and cannot
help noticing the distinctly Catholic character which the message inculcates,
both in the apparitions of the Angel, which inspired us to choose the titles
for the future church, and in the apparitions of Our Lady, which contains
dramatic references to the mediating role of the Pope and the Bishops,
regarding the unity of the Church and for the peace of the world (paragraph 9).

In the
first edition of his new quarterly publication, Fatima Luz e Paz (Fatima
Light and Peace), the Rector recounted how in March 2004 the Holy Father
donated the first foundation stone for the new church of the Most Holy Trinity.The stone, “a precious and historical marble
fragment of the tomb of the Apostle St Peter”, from St Peter’s Basilica, Rome,
was set in place as a cornerstone in the foundations of the new church on 6th
June, the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, and its presence will confirm “the
great loves of the Christians of Portugal: the Eucharist, Mary and the Pope”.

Normal
Catholics must find it difficult to understand why a group which claims to be
loyal to the Church, Our Lady and the Holy Father, should want to oppose these
recent and encouraging developments.As
the evidence cited below from their own publications will demonstrate, the
regrettable truth is that situations such as the recent visit to Fatima by the
Hindus have been regularly exploited by this group since the early 1990s, as a
means of gaining publicity and support for an alternative agenda of their own.

Their
tactics follow the same pattern: to use a situation such as the visit by the
Hindus to the Capelinha in May 2004, or the International Congress at Fatima in
October 2003, as a pretext for making a number of unfounded and gravely
erroneous assertions about the event, in a manner calculated to cause the
maximum scandal and confusion among the faithful, who have no means of
ascertaining whether the reports are true or not.

This is
what happened after the terrorist outrage in New York on 11th
September 2001.Not long afterwards,
the same group began to circulate a number of completely untrue allegations:
that Sister Lucia had had new revelations, she had sent the Pope letters of
warning, she could not sleep at night, the Holy See had not published the whole
of the third part of the secret, etc.

As a
result, Archbishop Bertone, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, had an interview with Sister Lucia in her convent at Coimbra.She said there was not a grain of truth in
these allegations, there were no more secrets to be published, and if she had
had new revelations from Our Lady, “I would not have
spoken of them to anyone, but would have told them directly to the Holy
Father”.

Then she
made the following telling complaint:

How many things they are putting into my
mouth ! How many things they make me seem to do !

(Reported
in L’Osservatore Romano, 9 January 2002, page 7)

Looking
back, we can see that this complaint can be applied to what has happened
recently in Fatima, with regard to the alleged “interfaith shrine”, the
“ecumenical temple” and the “desecration” of the Capelinha.They use such allegations, calculated to
cause maximum shock and scandal, so as to gain publicity and support for their
own alternative agenda, as will be explained further on.

As we will
see in more detail below, it was in the early 1990s that they began to deny and
reject Pope John Paul II’s fulfilment of Our Lady’s request for the
consecration of Russia in 1984, in direct opposition to Sister Lucia’s
statement that “heaven has accepted it”.Ever since they have maintained an unceasing campaign to try and force
the Pope to undertake the act again, in accordance with their own directives
and the alternative agenda which motivates them; and at the same time, they
have completely ignored the wonderful and most important developments with
regard to Fatima that have been carried out by Pope John Paul II, and which I
have summarised in two Catholic Truth Society booklets.

The first
title, Message of Fatima, covers the steady and noteworthy development
of the Message of Fatimain the Life of the Church and the Teaching of
the Popes, from 1917 to 1997.The
second, Fatima in the Third Millennium, recounts the Beatification of
Francisco and Jacinta Marto, on 13th May 2000; the publication of
the Third Part of the Secret by Cardinal Ratzinger, on 26th June
2000; and finally, the Pope’s unprecedented Act of Entrustment of 8th
October 2000, whereby he placed the whole of the Third Millennium under the
Immaculate Heart of Our Lady of Fatima.

Never before in the history of the Church has a private revelation
received such an exceptional mark of approval from the Pope; hence, at a time
when the Church is facing an unparalleled attempt by the forces of secularism
to suffocate, deny and reject Christianity from the whole of society, in
once-Christian Europe and throughout the world, it is a matter of great
importance that all Catholics loyal to Peter should seek to understand and
follow where the Pope is leading the Church in devotion to the Immaculate Heart
of Mary, Mother of the Saviour and spouse of the Holy Spirit.

For God’s
plan is that “in the end” her Immaculate Heart will triumph over the forces
oppressing the Church of her Divine Son; and by the numerous developments with
regard to Fatima in his pontificate, culminating in his unprecedented Act of
Entrustment of 8th October 2000, John Paul II has gone a great deal further
than any of his predecessors in preparing the way for the Church to bring about
that triumph.

None of
these developments appear to be of any interest to Vennari, Fr Gruner and
others of their persuasion.The reason
must be, as we will see from their own writings cited below, that their case
carries hidden within itself an alternative extremist agenda.Is this the reason why they have changed the
meaning of Our Lady’s request for the consecration of Russia, by blatantly
altering her words and substituting their own in place of the version recorded
by Lucia ?If they cannot be trusted to
copy correctly the words of the Holy Mother of God, how much credence should be
placed in their subsequent allegations and accusations ?

John
Vennari is no stranger to Fatima.Since
at least 1995, he has taken the same stance as Fr Gruner in rejecting Pope John
Paul II’s consecration of Russia on 25th March 1984 as the
fulfilment of Our Lady’s request.This
stance puts both of them in open opposition to Sister Lucia, who categorically
rejected Fr Gruner’s forms petitioning for the consecration to be done again,
and specifically insisted that “the consecration desired by Our Lady was made
in 1984, and heaven has accepted it”.This is what she told Archbishop Bertone of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith on 17th November 2001, when he visited Sister Lucia in
her convent at Coimbra (report in L’Osservatore Romano, 9th
January 2002, p. 7).

In fact, Catholic
Family News, edited by John Vennari, has for some years been owned and
published by Fr. Gruner, in addition to his own publication, Fátima Crusader.As we will see below, both Fr Gruner and
Vennari base their rejection of the Holy Father’s consecration in 1984, upon a
grave and seemingly deliberate violation of the words in which Our Lady
conveyed her request for this act to Sister Lucia.

With
regard to Vennari’s views of the Church, in recent years Catholic Family
News has also become very critical of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II
over the issues of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, and this culminated
in the Holy Year 2000 with the publication by Catholic Family News of a
document addressed to Pope John Paul II, the very title of which - We Resist
You to Your Face - made it abundantly clear where they stand, with regard
to the Church and the Pope.

John
Vennari even went so far as to suggest, in a booklet he wrote which was
publishedby Tan Books in the USA in
1999, that the “post-Vatican II revolution bears all the hallmarks of
fulfilling the designs of the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita”.This was “a secret document written in the
early 19th century that mapped out a blueprint for the subversion of
the Catholic Church” from within, and which had been issued by an Italian
Masonic lodge.

By
recklessly ignoring the Popes of the past, our present Church leaders have
erected a compromised structure that is collapsing upon itself … Hence, Vatican
II’s novelties are not unconditionally binding on the faithful”, concluded
Vennari.“Catholics may ‘make
reservations’ and even resist (emphasis in the original) any teachings
from the Council that would conflict with the perennial Magisterium of the
centuries (pages 1, 29, 30, 31).

The
rejection of Pope John Paul II’s consecration of Russia on 25th
March 1984

Since the
early 1990s, Fr. Gruner, Vennari and others of their persuasion have been
promoting an unrelenting campaign asserting that the Pope has not yet fulfilled
Our Lady’s request for the consecration of Russia, despite the fact that their
argument must necessarily originate from and refer to the words which they
themselves have openly violated, in which the Most Holy Virgin made the request
for the consecration.

The
book by Frere Francois, Fatima: Tragedy & Triumph, first published
by Fr. Gruner’s imprint, Immaculate Heart Publications, in 1994, and which is
prominently promoted and listed on Fr. Gruner’s website as currently available,
contains the most blatant and extensive example of this grave violation.

Everyone
knows the words of Our Lady’s request for the consecration of Russia so well,
as faithfully recorded by Lucia in her Memoirs, that it should hardly be
necessary to repeat them.But in this
case, it is absolutely essential that you refer to them, so that you can see
for yourself that the original words of Our Lady as recorded by Lucia are unmistakably
not the words you will read in the book by Frere Francois.Instead, as we will see, Frere Francois
substituted his own version of Our Lady’s request, in which he substantially
changed its meaning, firstly by altering the position of some of Our Lady’s
words, and secondly, by making his own radical additions to them.

Despite
this grave violation, in the Winter 1995 issue of Fr Gruner’s Fatima
Crusader, John Vennari wrote a glowing 2-page review of Frere Francois’
book, in which he said,

Frere Francois has come to
set the record straight with … uncompromising fidelity to the facts.

Earlier, in a Christmas 1994
circular letter, Fr Gruner had said of the same book,

The facts, and
Frere Francois’ meticulous scholarship, speak for themselves.

If that were indeed the
case, how was it that Frere Francois did not give the reader something so
simple as a correct copy of the words of Our Lady as recorded by Lucia, which
everyone can read for themselves in her Memoirs ?And what does it say about the value of John Vennari’s and Fr
Gruner’s opinions, that they described a work which contains the following grave
violation of Our Lady’s words, “as uncompromising fidelity to the facts” and
“meticulous scholarship”?

Between
pages 178 and 179 of Fatima: Tragedy & Triumph is a block of some 16
pages of illustrations with accompanying text.Fig 4 reproduces the well known artistic representation of Sr. Lucia’s
vision of the Most Holy Trinity on 13 June 1929, when Our Lady came to request
the consecration of Russia.

The
following is Frere Francois’ version of Our Lady’s request:

The
moment has come in which God asks (of) the Holy Father to make,
and to order that in union with him and
at the same time, all the bishops of the world (to) make
the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to convert it because of this
day of prayer and world wide reparation.

In the
above text, the position of “to make” has been altered, it has also been
wrongly duplicated, and the numerous other words shown in Italics were not
spoken by Our Lady, and hence have been added to or substituted for her words
by Frere Francois.How significantly
his version differs from the actual words spoken by Our Lady may be seen from

Sister
Lucia's account in her memoirs, cited as follows:

The moment has come in which God
asks the Holy Father, in union with all the Bishops of the world, to make the
consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this
means.

Frere
Francois’ verdict on John Paul II is that he “obstinately refuses to embrace
the reparatory devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to make an appeal to
the all-powerful mediation of the Virgin Mary to obtain the conversion of
Russia and the peace of the world” (p. 182), that “he abandons the whole
message of Fatima and substitutes for it a Masonic humanism” (p. 196), and that
when he made the act of consecration on March 25th 1984, he “feigned
submitting to the requirements of heaven” (p. 212).

However,
the true version of her words, as printed in Lucia’s Memoirs, makes it clear
that Our Lady was asking the Pope, (who self-evidently was not requested
to order all the bishops to do it “with him and at the same time”,
as Frere Francois, Fr. Gruner and others of their associates would have us
believe) to make the act as chief shepherd, and that accordingly he should be
in union with all the bishops when he did so.

This was
indeed precisely how the act was effected on 25 March 1984, because on that
occasion all the bishops had received the text of the act in advance, together
with the invitation to join with the Pope in making the act.The fact that some bishops did not join with
him in making the act themselves, does not alter the fact that

the Pope
fulfilled the request of Our Lady because he was in union with all the bishopswhen he made it.

Chapter two
of my book, Fatima, Russia & John Paul II, (sub-title: How Mary
intervened to deliver Russia from Marxist atheism, 13 May 1981 – 25 December
1991)answers all the doubts and objections raised against the Pope’s
act, and shows that it did in truth comply with Our Lady’s request, that Russia
was included in the act, and hence that

“the
consecration desired by Our Lady was made in 1984 and heaven has accepted it”,

as Lucia
categorically stated in November 2001.In this work, I have cited the supernatural signs and testimonies which
demonstrate that the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and the cessation of
the formidable Marxist atheist persecution of the Church in Central and Eastern
Europe, is attributable to the intercession of Mary’s Immaculate Heart,
following the Pope’s act of consecration in 1984.

In October
1992, a few months after my book was first published, Fr Gruner met me at
Fatima and invited me to debate “the consecration issue”, at a conference he
had organised, which had been forbidden by the Holy See and by the Bishop of
Leiria-Fatima.

I refused
to do so because, as I told him, my book demonstrated that the Pope had
accomplished the consecration of Russia, and hence there was no longer any
consecration issue to debate.Instead,
I gave him my work and challenged him to review it in his magazine, Fatima
Crusader, and point out any errors it might contain.He promised to do so, but since then he has
never once mentioned its existence.

If I am
mistaken, I am certainly willing to be corrected.We are contemplating the mystery of the most profound and
wonderful divine intervention, which “among the signs of the times” for the
tormented twentieth century, “is certainly one of the greatest”, as John Paul
II said in a letter to the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima in October 1997.Accordingly, we need to be as certain as
possible that what we are proclaiming is the truth, and so I submitted the text
of my book to the office of the Rector of Fatima, prior to publication, where
the content was checked for accuracy.The Pope himself read it and signified his approval to the Polish
editor, when he was presented with a copy of the Polish translation at a
private audience in February 1994.

God
subsequently endorsed Pope John Paul II’s consecration of Russia in a manner
that no one could have foreseen, through the mysterious collapse of the world’s
second greatest military superpower, peacefully and from within; and in those
countries of the former Soviet Union, where Marxism had devastated the Church
and sown a wilderness of atheism, God is now reaping a rich harvest of Catholic
seminarians – 4000 in the academic year 2002-03, and a further 6000 in Poland,
according to statistics published by Aid to the Church in Need.

Is not
that remarkable reversal a sign from heaven inviting the Church to follow the
Holy Father’s example in accepting the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
which, Our Lady said in July 1917, “God wishes to establish in the world”
?At the same time it also points to
another paradoxical and less welcome sign – namely that, while the Church is
resurrecting in Central and Eastern Europe, in the West, which remained free
from the terrible scourge of Communism, the Church is nevertheless experiencing
an unprecedented fall in congregations and the collapse of vocations.

If my book
does not demonstrate the truth about the consecration, why has Fr Gruner failed
to point out where it goes wrong ?If
it does demonstrate the truth, why does he not admit it ?Is it perhaps because Fr. Gruner shares the
seriously distorted views of Frere Francois about Fatima and the Church ?Is it because Fr Gruner too has another
version of his own making which he has substituted for the true words of Our
Lady’s request, as we find in the following text on page 254 of the
auto-biographical section he wrote in the book, Fatima Priest (published
in 1997) ?

The
moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father to make, together with all the Catholic Bishops of
the world the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save
it by this means.

In this
version, we see that Fr. Gruner has achieved the same significant alteration of
Our Lady’s meaning as Frere Francois, albeit more simply, by moving up “to
make” in front of the dependent clause, and by changing “in union with” to
“together with”.

It is
remarkable how Fr Gruner and his associates are unable to copy accurately the
few words from Lucia’s memoirs, in which Our Lady conveyed her request for the
consecration of Russia.In about May
2004, Fr. Gruner’s Fatima Crusader issued a Special Report criticising
the American priest, Fr Robert Fox, for upholding the Pope’s consecration of
1984.The following is the version of
Our Lady’s request as printed in this Special Report:

The
moment has come for God to ask (the correct words are: in which
God asks) the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops
of the world, the consecration of Russia …

Although
“in union with” has not been changed to “together with”, as in the version
above printed in Fr Gruner’s book, nevertheless altering the position of “to
make” has brought about the same change in meaning.Instead of the Holy Father being in union with all the bishops
when he made the act, these people have sought to argue that the Holy
Father was to make the act in union with all the bishops, who were to be making
the act in union with him, i.e, “together with”, as Fr Gruner would have it, or
“in union with him and at the same time”, according to the supposedly
meticulous scholarship of Frere Francois.

It is
clear that this blatant manipulation of Our Lady’s words has been introduced in
a vain attempt to circumvent the truth that by his act of 1984, John Paul II
satisfied the condition that he was in union with all the bishops when he made
it.How many bishops were or were not
in union with him in making the act themselves, was a matter for them, and
hence a secondary issue which did not invalidate the Pope’s act.

If the
matter of the consecration of Russia really is as serious as Fr Gruner, Frere
Francois, John Vennari and others of their persuasion want everyone to believe,
how can they continue to stand up in front of God, the Holy Mother of God, and
the whole Church, and assert that the Pope has not yet complied with her
request, not on the basis of the words of Mary Immaculate, but according to a
version of her words to which they have freely made their own alterations and
additions ?Have they ever explained
why they found it necessary to alter the words of Mary Immaculate, from whom
Lucia was chosen to receive them ?What
possible explanation can there be ?

In Book II of Fatima Priest, Fr. Gruner devoted the whole of
chapter five (pages 262 – 273) to explaining why “in the objective moral order,
under pain of mortal sin, the Pope and the bishops are bound to consecrate
Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.If the Pope today cannot obey Our Lady’s command ... the Pope is most
definitely obliged to command all the Catholic Bishops to join him in consecrating
Russia” (pp. 263, 264).

It is simply not true to assert that the Pope has to “obey” a “command”
of Our Lady, because as everyone can see in Lucia’s memoirs, “command” is
another of Fr Gruner’s substitutions for the actual word spoken by Our
Lady.As Lucia tells us, Our Lady
simply said, “the moment has come in which God asks …”.Applying his “command” in place of her
“asks”, Fr Gruner went on to maintain that if he were to hear Pope John Paul
II’s confession, he would not be able to give him absolution unless he promised
to do the consecration again.Furthermore, he would have to tell the Pope “he was in danger of losing
his soul in Hell if he didn’t make such an undertaking” because “the Pope is
most seriously bound to obey Our Lady of Fatima even under pain of mortal sin”
(page 269).

We
get an indication of the source of Fr Gruner’s extreme views from the fact that
it was his imprint, Immaculate Heart Publications, which published the first
English edition of Fatima: Tragedy & Triumph by Frere Francois in
1994.This work is the last of a
four-volume series, all of which are currently listed (in July 2004) as
available on Fr. Gruner’s website of Catholic books, and the author, Frere
Francois, is a member of the community based at Troyes in France, which was
founded in a state of disobedience by Abbe Georges de Nantes, after he had been
suspended “a divinis” on 26 August 1966.

In
his book Frere Francois followed the thinking of Abbe de Nantes and totally
rejected the Second Vatican Council which, he wrote, “under pretext of pastoral
reform, has attacked, thrown into confusion and ruined the dogma of the faith”
(p. 210).

In
note 64 to chapter V, on page 292 of his book, Frere Francois informed the
reader that Abbe de Nantes had been accusing Pope Paul VI of “heresy, schism
and scandal” from 1965 onwards, and that his Books of Accusation against Pope
Paul VI and Pope John Paul II were “juridical acts formally made in view of
obtaining an opening of the legal process against the Pope for heresy, schism
and scandal”.Abbe de Nantes himself
went to Rome to present the first Book of Accusation against Pope Paul VI, in
1973, and the second Book of Accusation, against Pope John Paul II, in 1983.

In May
1993, Abbe de Nantes presented at the Vatican a “Book of Accusation for Heresy
against the Author of the supposed Catechism of the Catholic Church,
catechism of pride, catechesis of deceit”, in which he “denounced the major
heresies proliferating in this text”.The twelfth and last of the alleged heresies listed by de Nantes was
“your gnosis, Most Holy Father”.

Fr
Gruner clearly does not disapprove of this stance, since he publishes and
distributes Frere Francois’ book, and John Vennari’s glowing review of it was
published in Fr Gruner’s magazine, Catholic Family News. Also, in the book Fatima Priest - Book
II of which, “In his own words”, was written by Fr Gruner – the Bibliography
lists all four volumes of the books by Frere Francois, as well as the following
three titles, under the heading Magazines and Newspapers:The Fatima Crusader, Fr Gruner’s own
publication; next, The Catholic Counter-Reformation, the publication of
Abbe Georges de Nantes, as issued from an address in Canada; and lastly, Catholic
Family News.

On 16thMay 1996, Fr Gruner was suspended adivinis,
according to Can. 1333 § 1, by his Ordinary, the Bishop of Avellino in
Italy, where he had been ordained in 1976.The decree was confirmed by the Congregation for the Clergy on 20thSeptember 1996.

Fr Grüner
then appealed twice against this decision to the Supreme Tribunal of the
Apostolic Signatura.On 10thJuly 1999, the case was definitively
closed, when the Supreme Tribunal fully confirmed the actions of the
Congregation for the Clergy, and accordingly both his suspension and the
order to return to his diocese remain in vigour.

Nevertheless
the Fatima Crusader Special Report of May 2004, page 2, described Fr
Gruner’s suspension as:

a canonical fiction, based
upon a non-existent offence concocted by the Vatican Secretary of State.

With
regard to the Abbe de Nantes, the following information wais taken from his own
website in July 2004.

The
Abbé de Nantes is the editor of “The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 21st
Century, following the Catholic highroad between heresy and
schism”.He began to publish this
bulletin in October 1967, and in 1969-70 he founded the
"League of the Catholic Counter-Reformation".

The Abbé de Nantes believes that the new "orientations" of
the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), upheld and further developed by Popes
Paul VI and John Paul II, have been an unmitigated disaster for the
Church.For thirty-five years the Abbé
de Nantes' position has not changed.His opposition to the novelties and distortions of the so-called reform
of the Church decreed by Vatican II is ... based on the observation of the
detestable results of these novelties.

The
Catholic Counter-Reformation is opposed to the sedevacantists
and the lefebvrists on the one hand and the various Conciliar trends –
progressive and conservative – on the other hand.

The
facts cited above can be checked by referring to the publications in
question.In the light of the above
summary, it is clear that these people have an alternative agenda based on
motives which are not at first apparent, and which are seriously at variance
with and even outrightly reject the programmes being advanced by Pope John Paul
II and by the Shrine of Fatima.It is
also evident that they are willing to stir up widespread scandal and confusion
in the media, by publishing seriously misleading and erroneous accounts of
events such as the visit to Fatima by the Hindu community in Portugal, or the
words of the Queen of Heaven recorded by Lucia, as a means of advancing their
own alternative and undisclosed agenda.

For
these reasons, allegations directed against the Church and Fatima which emanate
from these sources should be treated with extreme caution.